NTUT Undergraduate
Key to the Kingdom
This is really two films in one: The story of a priest’s spiritual journey through life on the one hand, and on the other hand the film introduces modern China and the Chinese people to American audiences. I’ll discuss the two aspects of the film one at a time. There are also two background stories that we need to keep in mind. The one story is a religious “civil war” in Europe that must appear incomprehensible to non-Christians; China itself which may appear to be incomprehensible to Westerners.
Religion
The religious civil war concerns Catholics and Protestants. On the one hand, Catholics and Protestants are Christians; they all believe that Jesus was the Savior, they all follow Jesus’ teachings to “love thy neighbor”, to be forgiving, and so on. On the other hand Catholics and Protestants in Europe have, over the centuries, routinely slaughtered each other. In the film, Father Chisholm says that this must appear strange to the Chinese mind. I myself cannot explain it, but I understand some differences that may begin to explain the problems. However, before I begin I should say that I was raised Catholic, so I cannot ever be 100% sure if I am being objective. That is one of the issues in cross-cultural (or cross-religious, or cross-gender) communications: Is it possible to be completely lucid? At any rate, my notes here were made after many lengthy discussions with Dr. Griffith, who was raised Protestant and who has studied both Catholic and Protestant theology. Dr Griffith and I agree that there seem to be two broadly distinct ‘forms’ of Christianity; two broadly distinct emphases.
Roman Catholicism is the Church of Peter, one of the 12 Apostles of Jesus. Peter is regarded as the first Pope. In matters of faith, Catholics look to the Pope in Rome and to the Council of Bishops to make decisions about matters of creed or doctrinal belief. Catholics go so far as to believe that the Pope is infallible (cannot be wrong) in matters of creed, something Protestants cannot understand. (In fact, Catholics are often called “papists” (or “dirty papists”, as in the film) by Protestants.) This is in part because Catholics believe that the Church exists simultaneously on earth and in heaven. Protestant churches do not. That is why, in general, Catholics like Cathedrals while Protestants prefer very modest churches. It is often said that Catholics worship Mary; some of my Christian friends in Taiwan ask me about this. It is not true that Catholics worship Mary as a god. However, I can see why Protestants would think so: Catholics have their special prayer “Hail Mary, full of grace…”, many churches are named St. Mary’s, and there are innumerable statues of her to which Catholics pray. In theological fact, Mary has a ‘special’ place in the church: she was chosen by God to give birth to Jesus, thus she is no ordinary woman. She gave birth immaculately (there was no father). But while she is no ordinary woman, she is also no god. Likewise, the church is no ordinary building: it exists simultaneously on earth and in heaven; and the Pope is no ordinary man, hence he can be (at least in theological theory) infallible. But realistically, I understand that it appears that in effect Catholics worship Mary as a god and even the Pope as a god. Since the Pope, Bishops and the priests are not ordinary people, and since nuns are modeled after Mary and are also not ordinary, they are not allowed to marry.
Now, Catholics tend to focus their worship on the life of Jesus; the Church calendar is based on the life of Jesus, on his biography. (Mel Gibson, who made the film The Passion is a Catholic.) Catholics re-live the life, works, teachings, sufferings, and resurrection of Jesus over and over for their entire lives. This is important since our film is structured around the life of a priest and his trials and sufferings. The film is very Catholic in structure. Catholic films and novels and stories tend to focus on a single individual and his temptations, trials, and suffering. Also, until very recently, Catholics believed that salvation depends both on faith in God and also on good works here on earth. Importantly, for Catholics, the earth and heaven are not completely separated.
Protestantism originated in the Reformation era, in the 16th century, beginning with the theological attacks of Martin Luther on the Church of Rome. Protestants are a historical phenomenon that foreshadowed the Enlightenment, especially the philosophy of Immanuel Kant for whom every human being has in him or herself the fundamentally equal ability to think for themselves. Thus, Protestants take their doctrinal authority, not from a Pope, but from the Bible itself and from their own ability to understand its teachings. It is an admirably reasonable position. Protestants often believe that theirs is the Church that Peter had intended but that had become corrupt in Rome. (In fact, some Protestants go so far as to say that the Pope is the anti-Christ and that Roman Catholics are satanic.) In any case, since religious authority comes from the Bible alone there are innumerable Protestant churches. Far too many to count, each with a different interpretation of what the Bible says or really means. Protestants tend to focus on the entire Bible: from Genesis to revelation, from the beginning of time to the end of time. The life of Jesus is just one episode in universal history: An extremely important episode, but still just one among many. Protestants take very seriously that this earth is a fallen world, is irredeemable (meaning that the earth cannot be “saved” and made heavenly—that would be a grave sin), and is completely separated from the kingdom of heaven. Thus they have a very different orientation than Catholics, for whom there is an ambiguity between this world and the kingdom of heaven. For Protestants, we humans will be saved at the end of time. (On the other hand, in recent Protestant history, there has been a movement that sees Jesus as a personal savior, as a kind of super-best-friend. This movement then tends to ignore the universal history that had been common in Protestantism since Luther. I do not really understand this movement in Protestantism, but I do see that it is very strong and popular.) In any case, since this world and heaven are separate, priests are not special, they are human like anybody else and so can marry and have families; again, an admirably reasonable position.
At any rate, it is at least possible to see how each side can say that the other has turned their back on the Truth, and thus each can think of the other as “less” than they leading to violence (such as we see in the film) that marked European history for centuries and even continues in Northern Ireland.
In any case, this background is necessary since in our film, Father Chisholm is twice tempted to hate Protestants: first, when they beat his father nearly to death (and he then loses both his mother and father) and second when, after years struggling to build a church in China, Protestants come to build their own church and maybe erase all of Father Chisholm’s works. This is a part of a classic “Catholic” film structure: the trials of the solitary priest (remember, he cannot marry, he has no family to help him in his trials, he is alone as Jesus was alone when Jesus was betrayed by his Apostles before his death.)
The trials of Father Chisholm:
Trial 1: He loses his parents to Protestant hatred
Trial 2: He loses his fiancée to another man; she gets pregnant and dies
Trial 3: He is considered troublesome as a seminary student because of doctrinal matters (thinking like a reasonable Protestant sometimes when he asks in effect that since birth is accidental how can it matter to God if I am Catholic, Protestant, or for that matter Confucian?)
Trial 4: He is unsuccessful as a priest in Scotland
Trial 5: His hopes for a church in China are at first dashed; he finds himself friendless, nearly homeless, and eventually despised by the people
Trial 6: He saves the life of a Mandarin yet feels he has been mistreated and he is immediately replaced by the local physicians
Trial 7: He expects that the nuns will fulfill his hopes for a school, but must endure the fact that the Sister Superior considers him inferior to her
Trial 8: He takes part in an action that means killing people
Trial 9: He must watch as his best friend dies while still an atheist
Trial 10: He must remain calm while Protestants come to his village to establish their own church
Trial 11: When he returns home to Tynecastle he is asked to retire even though he doesn’t want to
How Is China seen by Westerners?
--Hegel--
Maybe the most well known presentation of China to Westerners before cinema, TV and other modern media is G. W. F. Hegel’s chapter on China in his Philosophy of History [pp116-138, Dover ed.] from the 19th century. Hegel never visited China, and as far as I know never even met anyone from China whom he could question. All that he writes comes from his reading of Westerners’ accounts of China (many accounts from Christian missionaries) and also from his reading of some great Chinese literature and philosophy which had recently been translated. So the chapter is both a reporting on what Westerners know (or think they know) about China, and also some judgments about China of his own.
This empire early attracted the attention of Europeans, although only vague stories about it had reached them. It was always marveled at as a country which, self-originated, appeared to have no connection with the outer world. In the 13th century a Venetian (Marco Polo) explored it for the first time, but his reports were deemed fabulous. In later times, everything he said respecting its extent and greatness was entirely confirmed. […] By the lowest calculation, China has 150,000,000 inhabitants; another makes the number 200,000,000, and the highest raises it to 300,000,000. From the north it stretches toward the south to India; on the east it is bound by the vast Pacific Ocean, and on the west it extends towards Persia and the Caspian Sea. China proper is overpopulated. On both rivers, the Hoang-ho and the Yang-tse-Kiang, dwell many millions of human beings, living on rafts adapted to all the requirements of their mode of life. The population and the thoroughly organized State-arrangements, descending even to the minutest details, have astonished Europeans; and as a matter of special astonishment is the accuracy with which their historical works are executed. For in China the Historians are some of the highest functionaries. Two ministers constantly in attendance on the Emperor, are commissioned to keep a journal of everything the Emperor does, commands and says, and their notes are then worked up and made use of by the Historians.
[ …]
We now pass from these few dates in Chinese history to the contemplation of the Spirit of the constitution, which has always remained the same. We can deduce it from the general principle which is the immediate unity of the substantial Spirit and the Individual; but this is equivalent to the Spirit of the Family, which is here extended over the most populous of countries. The element of Subjectivity—that is to say, the reflection upon itself of the individual will in antithesis to the Substantial or the recognition of this power as one with its own essential being, in which it knows itself as free—is not found in the development of China. The Universal Will displays its activity immediately through the individual; the latter have no self-cognizance at all in antithesis to Substantial, positive being, which it does not yet regard as a power standing over against it—as in Judaism where the “Jealous God” is known as the negation of the Individual. In China the Universal Will immediately commands what the individual is to do, and the latter complies and obeys with proportionate renunciation of reflection and personal independence. […] The element of subjectivity is therefore as much wanting to this political totality as the latter is on its side altogether destitute of a foundation in the moral disposition of the subject. For the Substance is simply an individual—the Emperor—whose law constitutes all disposition.
This relation then, expressed more definitely and more conformably with its conception, is that of the Family. On this form of moral union alone rests the Chinese State and it is objective family piety that characterizes it. […] The duties of the family are absolutely binding and established and regulated by law.
Hegel then goes into a lengthy analysis in which he tries to show that the Family is structured like the State itself, and at the same time the State is structured like a Family (with the Emperor as Father) so that there is again immediate Substance and no possibility of individual reflection. He follows this with a depiction of how the State is administered by Mandarins who represent the province when meeting the emperor, and who represent the emperor when administering the province. The Mandarins are required to be scrupulously moral. He says…
Every Mandarin is also bound to make known the faults he has committed every five years, and the trustworthiness of his confession is attested to by the Board of Control—the Censorship. […] From all this it is clear that the Emperor is the center, around which everything turns; consequently the well-being of the country and people depends on him. […] It is not their own conscience, their own honor, which keeps the officers of the country up to their duty, but an external mandate and the severe sanctions [punishments] by which it is supported. […] All is directed and superintended from above. All legal relations are definitely settled by rules; free sentiment—the moral standpoint generally—is thereby thoroughly obliterated. […] In China the distinction between Slavery and Freedom is necessarily not great, since all are equal before the Emperor—that is, all are alike degraded. As no honor exists, and no one has an individual right in respect of others, the consciousness of debasement predominates, and this easily passes into that of utter abandonment. With this great abandonment is connected the great immorality of the Chinese. They are notorious for deceiving wherever they can. Friend deceives friend. Their frauds are most astutely and craftily performed, so that Europeans have to be painfully cautious when dealing with them. Their consciousness of abandonment shows itself also in the religion of Fo [Confucius?] is so widely diffused; a religion which regards as the Highest and Absolute—as God—pure nothing; which sets up contempt for individuality, for personal existence, as the highest perfection.
Hegel continues with more history, how punishments are performed, Chinese religion, literature and science, all of which are esteemed in China and which Hegel analyzes in accord with his own ideology. He goes on…
Though in one respect the sciences appear thus pre-eminently honored and fostered, there are wanting to them on the other side that free ground of subjectivity, and that properly scientific interest, which make them a truly theoretical occupation of the mind. A free, ideal, spiritual kingdom has here no place. What may be called scientific in China is of a merely empirical nature, and is made absolutely subservient to the Useful on behalf of the State.
Hegel then discusses the arts in general and then begins to sum up his study.
The Chinese have as a general characteristic a remarkable skill in imitation which is exercised not merely in daily life, but also in art. They have not yet succeeded in representing the beautiful as beautiful; for in their painting, perspective and shadow are wanting. An although a Chinese painter copies European pictures (as the Chinese do everything else) correctly; although he observes accurately how many scales a carp has; how many indentations there are in the leaves of a tree, what is the form of various trees, and how the branches bend;--the Exalted, the Ideal and the Beautiful is not the domain of his art or skill. The Chinese are, on the other hand, too proud to learn anything from Europeans, although they must often recognize their superiority. […] The Europeans are treated as beggars, because the Europeans are compelled to leave their home and seek for livelihood elsewhere than their own country. Besides, Europeans, just because of their intelligence, have not yet been able to imitate the superficial and perfectly natural cleverness of the Chinese. […]
This is the character of the Chinese people in its various aspects. Its distinguishing feature is, that everything which belongs to Spirit—unconstrained morality in practice and theory, Heart, inward Religion, Science and Art properly speaking—is alien to it. The Emperor always speaks with majesty and paternal kindness to the people who, however, cherish only the meanest opinion of themselves […] and though there is no distinction conferred by birth, and everyone can attain the highest dignity, this very equality testifies to no triumphant assertion of the worth of the inner man, but instead testifies to a servile consciousness—one which has not yet matured itself so far as to recognize distinctions.
The Keys of the Kingdom
Hegel is speaking of China from antiquity to the 19th century. Our film takes place in the 20th so there are some similarities and some new clichés. Clichés are difficult to analyze and difficult to get rid of because nobody know where they come from. For example, there is a Western cliché that oriental women tend to be “submissive”. (We will see this cliché employed in two films later on.) First, what exactly does it mean: “submissive”)? Second, there is a Biblical tradition that says that women should “submit” to the man. Third, who invented that cliché? We can’t find an author who wrote a book about it and then debate whether it’s true or not, or in what way… On the one hand a cliché is “just a cliché” so we don’t take it seriously—or do we? After all, if the cliché is not true then why won’t it just “go away”? With Hegel’s chapter we can always analyze through his whole philosophy and ideology how he can make some of the claims that he does; and we can critique or just refute this or that. Cliché’s are more cunning. Anyways, after Hegel this happened:
1908 China’s emperor dies; a reactionary prince rises to power
1911 Qing dynasty overthrown; R.O.C. established by Dr. Sun Yat-sen; the Yangtze River overflows killing 100,000
1913 The United States recognizes the new government
1914 WWI in Europe
1924 The US sends Marines to China to help end the civil war
1926 Nationalists launch a military offensive to unite the country
1929 The Great Depression begins
1934 Mao’s army survives attacks from the Nationalists and begins the famous “Long March” of 6,000 miles; half of Mao’s army dies during the march
1937 Japan takes Peking (today Beijing)
1939 WW II begins; the US allies with China’s Nationalists
Our film takes place somewhere around this period. The first shots of China are boats on a river and lots of people. Indeed, say the word ‘China’ to a westerner and many people will immediately think: overpopulated and teeming with so many people that many have to live in boats. That was one of the first things Hegel says in his chapter. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the film:
Mr Pao: “I have been instructed to thank you and to say that it will not be necessary for you to trouble yourself again.”
Mr Chia (The Mandarin, meeting Father Chisholm) : “May I take the liberty of telling you who I am? […] You have done the greatest good for me; I must now do the greatest good I can for you […] If I, as a Mandarin, were to accept your faith, all of Bai-tan would inevitably follow as the day follows the sun. […] Do you mean you reject me? Father Chisholm: “Yes, I mean precisely that.” Mr Chia “I regret that I am not acceptable. I understand that this is so because I am unworthy. […] It has occurred to me to ask: Has Shen Fu ever looked or walked upon yon hill? […] I would like to help too, in my humble way. I beg you to honor me by accepting, as the property of your church, ‘the hill of the brilliant green jade’. […] Father Chisholm: “Are you serious?” Mr. Chia: “If I weren’t, I would be unworthy to look upon my son.”
Father Chisholm: “And this is Joseph.” Joseph: “I am most honored sir.” Willie Tulloch: “Hello Joe!”
Mr Chia: “May I offer you my hand in the fashion of the English? […] It would afford me great happiness if you and the ladies who assist you would lower yourselves to be my guest […] You wish me to—how is it said?—come to the point? […] It strikes me, Shen Fu, that with the imperial troops in the hills the republican troops in the city, your mission is inconveniently in the middle.” Father Chisholm: “I am sure that our neutrality will be respected.” Mr Chia: “It is a pleasant assumption, but, in any case, would it not be wise to remove yourself and your female associates at once to safety?”
A lot of what Hegel says reappears here. I could not help but be amused at how polite the Mandarin and his servants are; they speak a kind of English that is absolutely correctly polite. Whereas, Westerners are ‘plain spoken’ like Willie Tulloch (the atheist friend of Father Chisholm). There is a hidden mistrust that is distinctly modern. After Hegel and the revolutions in Europe, liberal democracy became dominant and in them tradition, manners, politeness, etc became in a certain way distrusted as relics of the old aristocracies. In fact, such mannerisms were looked upon with distrust. This was even an issue in the recent presidential campaign: Obama’s eloquence vs. McCain’s “straight talk express”. There was definitely an ideological battle being played out. Many Americans simply distrust eloquence. Obama actually changed the kind of English he spoke depending on the audience; he had to become sensitive to the fact that he might be mistrusted precisely because he is a good speaker and writer. When I was a hotel manager in Seattle my bosses would routinely say that we could “count on” this or that contractor because he was a “straight talker” or a “plain speaker”. That was always their first assessment of another person’s character. It’s a sort of ethos in America and Great Britain to “get to the point” as the Mandarin says in the film. So, on the one hand the audience will admire the polite speech, but on the other hand they will see it as a little suspicious, as an inability to get to the point.
Another cliché is that China really is as “fabulous” as Marco Polo said it was. Hegel makes this point also. In the film the Mandarin offers Father Chisholm the hill of the “brilliant green jade”. The camera then looks at the hill. Jade? What jade? It’s a hill. It has grass on it. The grass is green. Jade is green. Grass is not jade; if it was, we would all be rich! There are a million hills other like it! What’s the big deal? When I was at home visiting my mother in New York there was a letter in the newspaper by a Chinese student at Syracuse University who said that other students made fun of some of the names of food in China. The student spoke of a “heavenly nest of the blue bird of paradise” sandwich. The Chinese student wrote: “OK! I know! It’s an egg salad sandwich.” But he said that in China it is part of the “spice of life” to make ordinary things seem fabulous. It is neither true nor false; it is a form of play, a form of enjoyment.
Hegel’s observation that the Chinese are great imitators means that they are not creators. This is still a very persuasive cliché that the west nurtures. In our film I notice how when Father Chisholm drains the infection from the boy’s arm, the servants have immediately learned what to do, bring water without his asking, and then dismiss him as unnecessary. I notice also that when the Mandarin says he wants to convert, he says that he will “in time no doubt get used to” Christian customs. Meaning, he will simply imitate what Christians do, and then “all of Bai-tan” will imitate him. There is in the west on the one hand an admiration for China and its “traditional culture” because the west has had its revolutions and has rejected aristocratic traditions. That’s part of the problem between Chisholm and Mother Maria- Veronica who is from an old aristocratic family. On the other hand there is the suspicion that the east is buried in the past, that it looks always to the past for guidance; that it cannot invent anything new and so can only copy what we forward looking and inventive westerners do. In effect, they (the Chinese) steal our inventions instead of producing their own.
Hegel brings up the observation that the Chinese are “immoral” and “notorious at deceiving” others. In our film this is echoed in Joseph when he steals the eggs to bring to Father Chisholm and especially in the two who meet Father when he arrives in China, and who then steal the crucifix from the sisters.
Finally there is the vexing question of inner Spirit which includes inward religion and which is “alien” to China, Hegel says. This is the deepest and most interesting of Hegel’s judgments. Our film is divided about this, but in an interesting way. Joseph really is Christian, inwardly. The Mandarin is depicted as completely unable to become—inwardly—a Christian, and so Father Chisholm rejects him. Later he still wishes to learn more about the “amazing doctrine”, but he never converts. The Mandarin represents the old China, the one Hegel writes of. Joseph is not a Mandarin; he’s “ordinary” as far as we can tell; not from a wealthy family. It’s possible that he, Joseph, represents the “new China” which is becoming more and more western in the Hegelian sense—capable of the primacy of individuality (inwardness, Subjectivity) which originates in Judaism where, for Hegel, the individual becomes inwardly conscious of itself precisely in its being ‘negated’ by the “jealous God.”
This issue is more than cliché. For Hegel, History is the dialectical transformation of Absolute Substance into Absolute Subject. Hegel sees China as permanently entombed in Absolute Substance. Now, Hegel’s philosophy was taken over by Karl Marx and transformed into a material dialectic; but which also depended on dialectical transformation. In actual history Mao was a Marxist. It would be tempting to say that Mao managed to bring (Hegelian or Western) History into China and transform its ancient Substance into its modern Subjectivity and so the real hero of our film never appears on screen. It would be intellectually tempting to say that but I can’t; Mao’s version of Marxism is an extremely complex rethinking of the entire (Hegelian) philosophical structure and I just don’t know enough about it. However, there is a powerful philosopher from France, Alain Badiou, who is a Maoist and who wishes to bring this Chinese version of Marxism into Europe.
What little I understand is this: in the West there is—especially in Hegel’s thought—a dialectic between Inside and Outside; or, from the Inside out on the one hand and from the Outside in on the other. Remember, the Mandarins were required to be scrupulously moral, familial piety was enforced by law. In the west there is an extreme dread of the Outside in and an extreme reverence for the Inside out. That is to say, the westerner can never fully trust someone whose actions are influenced by some power outside that someone. The westerner will always think, yes, but what is he/she really feeling, thinking, desiring? In Hegel, the Outside is Substance; the Inside is Subject. For Hegel, as for many westerners, the goal is to bring Substance Inside and transform it to Subject. The eloquent person—like Obama, or the well-spoken Xerxes in 300, or the Mandarin in our film are slightly distrusted because this is all exterior, all rules of eloquence, traditions, laws, and so on. What the ideal is—again for many westerners—is something from the Inside: plain speech, common sense, belief in God in spite of all the evidence…whatever.
Now, Mao understood this dialectic of Inside/Outside very well, but he said that in fact there is no simple Inside/Outside. Instead there are many Insides/Outsides, many dialectics. In fact, there are infinitely many. His was a completely new ideology—one that Hegel would consider simply impossible. For Mao there are a multitude of dialectics: Male/Female; Young/Old; Traditional/Modern; Art/Science; Worker/Thinker;… Interestingly, Alain Badiou finds a confirmation of Mao’s insights in set theory. In set theory there is not just a simple dialectic of finite/infinite. Instead there are an infinity of infinities. But this takes us far beyond our film. However, as a final thought let us come back to those stubborn clichés. Are the clichés an Inside or an Outside? Are Asian women “submissive”? Well, a cliché is not an Outside rule or law, and it’s not an Inside belief like believing in God or Truth or Justice. A cliché is just a cliché. A cliché belongs neither Inside nor Outside. It is neither true (because nobody really knows what exactly it means) nor false (for the very same reason). Clichés simply circulate secretly within language like words and idioms. They are dangerous not because they are true or false, but because they neutralize further discussion. They seem to be ‘the last word’. They successfully circulate within language because language itself is neutral with regard to truth or falsity (the same language that says a truth can also say a lie).
At any rate, I ask that when you think about cross-culture, cross-religion, cross-gender, cross-whatever, do not either overestimate or underestimate clichés.
Thank you for listening!
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